https://doi.org/10.1177/1940161220918740
The International Journal of Press/Politics
2020, Vol. 25(3) 517­–537
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/1940161220918740
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Article
Protecting Democracy from
Disinformation: Normative
Threats and Policy Responses
Chris Tenove1
Abstract
Following public revelations of interference in the United States 2016 election, there
has been widespread concern that online disinformation poses a serious threat to
democracy. Governments have responded with a wide range of policies. However,
there is little clarity in elite policy debates or academic literature about what it
actually means for disinformation to endanger democracy, and how different policies
might protect it. This article proposes that policies to address disinformation seek to
defend three important normative goods of democratic systems: self-determination,
accountable representation, and public deliberation. Policy responses to protect these
goods tend to fall in three corresponding governance sectors: self-determination is
the focus of international and national security policies; accountable representation
is addressed through electoral regulation; and threats to the quality of public debate
and deliberation are countered by media regulation. The article also reveals some of
the challenges and risks in these policy sectors, which can be seen in both innovative
and failed policy designs.
Keywords
online disinformation, democracy, election campaign, media law, Internet, policy
making
Introduction
Since the 2016 election in the United States, policymakers, experts, and citizens have
expressed alarm that online disinformation may threaten democracy. Russian interference
in the election was “an attack on democracy itself,” U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer
1
The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada
Corresponding Author:
Chris Tenove, Department of Political Science, The University of British Columbia, C425 - 1866 Main
Mall, Vancouver, Canada BC V6T 1Z1.
Email: cjtenove@mail.ubc.ca
918740HIJXXX10.1177/1940161220918740The International Journal of Press/PoliticsTenove
research-article2020
518	 The International Journal of Press/Politics 25(3)
(2019) told Congress (p. S2776). In the year following the U.S. 2016 election, at least
seventeen countries had elections marred by disinformation, “damaging citizens’ ability
to choose their leaders based on factual news and authentic debate” (Freedom
House 2017: 1). Social media companies are frequently seen as part of the problem: At
Facebook’s annual shareholder meeting in 2018, a plane flew overhead with a banner
reading “YOU BROKE DEMOCRACY” (Osnos 2018).
Public opinion polls in many countries show that citizens fear that democracy is at
risk. A survey in Europe found 83 percent of people believe democracy is threatened
by fake news (European Commission 2018b); in Taiwan, 67.5 percent of people fear
disinformation could cause “great harm” to the country’s democracy (Taiwan
Foundation for Democracy 2019); and in the United States, 68 percent of Americans
identify “made-up news” as a significant threat to trust in government and a greater
problem than terrorism, racism, or climate change (Stocking 2019).1
In response to these concerns, governments have proposed or adopted a wide range
of policies. “If we do not regulate the Internet,” warned French President Emmanuel
Macron (2018), “there is the risk that the foundations of democracy will be shaken.”
Policy responses have ranged from offensive cyber-operations targeting disinformation
actors to new regulations for social media platforms.2
However, there is little
clarity in elite policy debates or academic literature about what it actually means for
disinformation to threaten democracy, and how different policies might protect democracy—or
jeopardize it. To help clarify these debates, this article makes two contributions,
both of which draw on an original survey of policy responses to disinformation
by ten democratic states and the European Union (EU).
First, building on recent systemic frameworks in democratic theory, I identify
three normative goods of democratic systems that policymakers have explicitly or
implicitly claimed to be threatened by disinformation. These are the self-determination
of polities by their own citizens; accountable representation through fair
elections; and public deliberation promoting opinion and will formation. While
these goods are interrelated, each highlights a different aspect of democratic political
systems that can be harmed by disinformation, requiring different policy
responses.
Second, I argue that threats to self-determination are primarily addressed through
security policies at international and domestic levels; threats to democratic representation
are principally addressed through new electoral regulations; and threats to
deliberation are primarily addressed by media regulation. While communication
scholars tend to focus on media regulation, most governments have enacted or proposed
regulations in all three policy sectors, and policies in all three sectors have
implications for news organizations as well as social media companies. Comparative
policy analysis reveals some of the challenges of policy making in these areas,
primarily due to regulatory capture, as well as examples of innovative and problematic
policy designs.
I conclude by identifying key implications of this analysis for developing and evaluating
policies to address disinformation.
Tenove	 519
Analyzing Policy Responses to Disinformation
In current policy-making documents and debates, disinformation usually refers to
intentionally false or deceptive communication tactics that actors use to advance
their political or economic aims. In a highly influential report, Wardle and
Derakhshan (2017) contrast “disinformation,” referring to intentionally false or
deceptive communication, with “misinformation,” which refers to communication
that may contain false claims but is not intended to cause harm (such as satire or
accidental errors). The term “disinformation” has also gained traction because it
has long been used to analyze Russian information operations. Indeed, some policy
responses by western governments to online disinformation have been grafted
onto preexisting approaches to address strategic communication operations by
Russia.
Some policymakers use cognate terms for disinformation, such as “information
operations” and “information manipulation” (see, for instance, Facebook 2017;
National Assembly 2018; NATO StratCom 2016). The term “disinformation” is
increasingly seen as preferable to “fake news.” As the European Commission’s High
Level Expert Group on Fake News and Online Disinformation (2018) argued, “fake
news” does not aptly describe the many forms of misleading communication online,
which go beyond false news stories to include manipulated images and videos, blends
of fact and falsehood, and the deceptive use of automated or fake accounts (pp. 10–
11). Furthermore, “fake news” has
been appropriated by some politicians and their supporters, who use the term to dismiss
coverage that they find disagreeable, and has thus become a weapon with which powerful
actors can interfere in circulation of information and attack and undermine independent
news media. (High Level Expert Group on Fake News and Online Disinformation 2018:
10; see also Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee 2018)
A powerful early narrative about disinformation in the 2016 U.S. election held
that foreign actors played the leading role in undermining electoral integrity
through the dissemination of false messages on social media platforms. However,
subsequent analysis has shown that domestic political candidates, journalists, and
citizens played major roles in promoting disinformation, and often did so to
advance partisan interests (Benkler et al. 2018; Watts and Rothschild 2017). For
this and other reasons, policy making to address disinformation has increasingly
been politicized. It is clear that policy responses to disinformation—including
decisions by some policymakers not to address the issue—may advantage or disadvantage
different political factions. There are also serious concerns about the
impact of disinformation policies on freedom of expression, a concern magnified
by repressive states using such laws to attack journalists and political opponents.
It is therefore important to bring rigorous normative analysis to sweeping claims
about how disinformation or disinformation policies affect democracy.
520	 The International Journal of Press/Politics 25(3)
Methodology: Democratic Theory and Policy Analysis
Greater conceptual clarity regarding the democratic threats posed by disinformation
has two benefits. The first is to improve empirical analysis by specifying the democratic
processes, institutions, or outcomes at risk. Empirical studies of the impact of
disinformation on democracy frequently use different definitions of disinformation (as
an independent variable) and different dependent variables, such as impacts on individual
voter preference formation, communicative flows in information systems, electoral
integrity, election outcomes, or trust in the media and other political institutions
(see, for instance, Allcott and Gentzkow 2017; Benkler et al. 2018; Guess et al. 2018).
This can be seen in the observation by Karpf (2017) that researchers can argue both
that the relatively small ad buys by Russia-backed actors likely did not influence public
opinion enough to swing the 2016 U.S. election, and that these violations of electoral
law were a major attack on democratic processes. Different forms and impacts of
disinformation are worth studying, but researchers should clearly define the variables
they focus on.
Second, different understandings of the democratic threat posed by disinformation
can be used to design and justify quite different policies. Normative claims and
assumptions are central to policy making (Goodin et al. 2006), and journalism and
media scholars have been encouraged to engage more substantively with normative
theory, and democratic theory in particular (Christians et al. 2010; Karppinen 2013).
This article therefore uses democratic theory to identify the core normative goods
that are explicitly or implicitly identified in responses to disinformation. I do so by
analyzing policy-making documents and debates of the EU and ten democratic states:
Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Taiwan, the United
Kingdom, and the United States. Cases were selected to include countries with different
media systems, drawing on classifications proposed by Hallin and Mancini (2004)
and by Brüggemann et al. (2014). Taiwan is included as a nonwestern democracy that
faces major disinformation threats, and the EU as a prominent policy actor with significant
influence on European state policies. Case countries were selected for variation
in media system in the expectation that this would yield more variation in policy
responses to analyze, as different media system types feature different forms of government
regulation. This article does not attempt to argue that particular media system
types tend toward particular disinformation responses, although that is a hypothesis
worth exploring.
Data regarding the normative propositions, organizational forms, and legal bases of
policies are derived from more than 100 sources including original policy documents,
government studies, major academic and think-tank reports, and news articles (primarily
in English or French, some using translation software). As per the methodology
of Kreiss et al. (2018), analysis proceeded by toggling between identifying emergent
categories in the data and engaging with concepts from democratic theory and media
studies. This analysis differs from proposing a freestanding normative framework,
arrived at deductively from existing normative theory, and it also differs from inductively
deriving normative claims through discourse analysis. Instead my approach is
Tenove	 521
abductive (Feilzer 2010), in that I identified both democratic goods under threat and
key policy sectors involved by alternating between the analysis of policy documents
and interpretation using alternate theoretical concepts. It is thus a form of “non-ideal”
normative analysis, which operates “between abstract ideal models and mere empirical
descriptivism, [and] which can function as a conceptual resource for evaluating,
identifying, and pushing up against different ways in which actual, existing institutions,
policies, and circumstances” can promote valued aims such as democratic communication
(Karppinen 2019: 73).
This article’s normative analysis draws on systemic approaches in democratic
theory (e.g., Habermas 1996; Mansbridge et al. 2012; Warren 2017). Systemic
approaches articulate key normative goods that a political system must promote for
it be democratic, but do not dictate which good warrants primacy. This article generally
employs the framework of Warren (2017), who proposes that a political system
must do three things to advance the fundamental democratic commitment that the
people should rule themselves. The three functions are empowering the inclusion of
individual members in decisions that affect them (such as through rights to vote in
elections, organize for causes, or contribute to public debates about political issues),
forming collective agendas and wills (such as through communication that enables
people to see how their individual preferences relate to collective judgments), and
making collective decisions (such as through binding elections). These basic functions
of democratic systems may be promoted by different bundles of institutions
and practices, which interact in complex ways. For instance, voting enables citizens
to select representatives, hold them to account for their performance, and empower
them to make decisions on behalf of the collective—which together I refer to as the
democratic good of “accountable representation.”
This analysis differs somewhat from two common approaches in political communication
research. One approach applies a particular “model” of democracy, such as
deliberative or participatory democracy (for a survey, see Karppinen 2013). Each
“model” emphasizes a singular constellation of institutions, practices, and normative
aims. However, actual democracies pursue multiple normative aims through multiple
institutions and practices. Another common approach is to focus on citizens’ roles as
both media consumers and democratic participants, such as “informed” or “monitorial”
citizens (Schudson 1998). Such analysis is useful for formulating regulative ideals
for institutions and citizens, and evaluating their achievement in practice (see, for
instance, Ytre-Arne and Moe 2018). However, it neglects key democratic activities
beyond those of average citizens, such as the work of electoral management bodies or
national security agencies.
Using concepts from systemic theories of democracy to interpret policy-making
documents and debates, I identify three key normative goods at stake. These are selfdetermination,
accountable representation, and deliberative processes of opinion and
will formation. Each of the following sections clarifies one of these democratic goods
and the risks it faces from online disinformation, examines policy responses that were
arguably designed to address those risks, and identifies challenges posed by such
policies.3
522	 The International Journal of Press/Politics 25(3)
Protecting Self-Determination: International and
National Security Policies
The head of the United Kingdom’s M16 intelligence agency stated in 2016 that online
propaganda and cyber-attacks “represent a fundamental threat to our sovereignty.
They should be a concern to all those who share democratic values” (MacAskill 2016).
Many governments and policymakers have echoed this concern that disinformation
threatens democracy because it undermines national security and—in the international
context—sovereignty. This section argues that the normative good of “self-determination”
clarifies this understanding of threats to security and sovereignty as threats to
democracy. It then examines recent international and national security policies
addressing disinformation, and highlights democratic risks of treating disinformation
as a security threat.
Disinformation as a Threat to Self-Determination
From ancient Athens to the U.S. constitution to twentieth-century de-colonization
struggles, political leaders and thinkers have argued that for a people to rule themselves
they must be free from external domination, as well as from domination by
domestic rulers or elites (Gould 2006; Habermas 1996; Young 2000). This conviction
is frequently referred to as self-determination. Disinformation is an attack on democratic
self-determination if it undermines or seeks to undermine the ability of a democratic
people to enact the collective rules that they have given themselves, or if it
compromises the selective empowerments that enable citizens to contribute to giving
themselves rules (such as a right to vote in fair elections, or to freely contribute to
public discourse on political issues).4
Concerns about self-determination thus focus on
how disinformation—particularly from foreign actors—can inappropriately include or
exclude people from democratic processes, including processes like elections and public
deliberation which will be discussed later.
Does that mean that any foreign influence is a threat to self-determination? Many
contemporary democratic theorists disagree. They argue that noncitizens or foreigners
should influence the democratic processes of states because, in a globalized world, the
actions of one state can have significant consequences for people in other states (see,
for instance, Gould 2006; Young 2000). However, there can certainly be justifiable
limits to influence by foreign actors, particularly if they are needed to protect the
selective empowerments conferred on citizens. As Gould (2006) argues, even if present
day global interdependence means that “sovereignty in a strong sense is no longer
applicable,” the democratic good of self-determination limits the justifiable forms of
foreign involvement (p. 51).
International Security Policies to Address Disinformation
International law does not provide clear guidelines for states to respond to foreign
disinformation campaigns, even when they occur during elections (Hollis 2018; Ohlin
Tenove	 523
2017). Cybersecurity breaches that disrupt critical state activities could be seen as
violations of state sovereignty that justify coercive state retaliation, on the basis of
self-defense under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter. However, while cyberoperations
that target physical infrastructure or data systems may clearly harm state
functions, it is much more difficult to make that argument regarding disinformation, as
it affects people’s beliefs, emotions, and cognitive processes. International law,
observes Hollis (2018), is a poor instrument to regulate “activities primarily defined
by their connection to the cognitive dimension. There is so much uncertainty about
evidence, causation, and motivations, that any new law is likely to prove ineffective
from the outset” (p. 44). Finally, customary international law does not appear to prohibit
information operations to influence another state’s elections, as states have regularly
done so without prompting coercive retaliation.
While governments have not proposed new treaties to address foreign disinformation,
they have created new operational policies that treat disinformation as a security
threat. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) alliance and its institutions
have identified disinformation as a key aspect of “hybrid warfare,” and increasingly
coordinate their military and intelligence capabilities to address it (NATO StratCom
2016). The G7 created the “Charlevoix Commitment on Defending Democracy from
Foreign Threats,” which includes a Rapid Response Mechanism to coordinate states’
intelligence and policing agencies to better identify and counter disinformation and
election interference (Government of Canada 2019). The most active international
cooperation on foreign disinformation occurs within the EU (European Commission
2018b). Initiatives focus on security sector coordination, as well as the electoral and
media regulations discussed later.
National Security Policy Responses
Governments have turned to their national security sectors to address online disinformation
by foreign or domestic actors. National security actions take a variety of forms,
from criminal law enforcement to intelligence gathering to offensive cyber-operations.
As an illustrative case, Canada created an intergovernmental task force to coordinate
intelligence agencies, federal police, and the foreign affairs department to address
disinformation (for an overview of Canadian disinformation policies, see Tenove and
Tworek 2019). It also created a nonpartisan panel to receive intelligence briefings during
election campaigns and decide whether to alert elected officials or the general
public about electoral interference. The panel addresses fears that—in the midst of an
election campaign—neither security agencies themselves nor the governing party can
publicize interference without concerns that they are doing so to illegitimately bias the
election outcome.
Like Canada, Nordic countries developed comprehensive national security plans to
address foreign disinformation (Cederberg 2018; Government of Denmark 2018). These
include cybersecurity and intelligence components, but they also emphasize media literacy
and public resilience. For instance, every Swedish household received a national emergency
brochure that included information about disinformation campaigns (Jeangène
524	 The International Journal of Press/Politics 25(3)
Vilmer et al. 2018: 120), and the Swedish defense department frequently shares information
with news media, including by regular Media Preparedness Councils (Cederberg
2018). Nordic governments have also emphasized strategic communication by the security
sector (Pamment et al. 2018), a tactic that the EU has primarily assigned to the East
StratCom Task Force.
Finally, military and intelligence agencies have contemplated or used offensive
cyber-operations to address online disinformation, such as hack-backs and counterinformation
operations. For instance, to address potential interference in its 2018 midterm
elections, the U.S. military temporarily blocked Internet access to the Russian
firm responsible for disinformation campaigns in the 2016 election (Nakashima 2019).
Challenges to Security Responses to Disinformation
Treating disinformation as a national security threat often makes sense. Disinformation
tactics could undermine a people’s capacity to enact its decisions via their democratic
government (such as by fabricating orders from public officials), or compromise a
people’s ability to contribute to rule making (such as by circulating news of a natural
disaster on a voting day). Furthermore, foreign governments can mobilize enormous
resources, and so governments may similarly need to martial their capacities to counteract
them. Indeed, only state security agencies have the combination of signals
intelligence and human intelligence needed to discover coordinated and covert disinformation
campaigns.
However, security agencies have fraught relationships with democracy. Their interference
in domestic political affairs can lead to excessive influence in democratic processes
by the governing party or by security agencies themselves. A national security
logic may unduly interpret false or partly false communications as security risks,
rather than as opportunities for correction and debate. As Farrell and Schneier (2018)
observe, national security frameworks tend to see opportunities for contentious communication
as vulnerabilities rather than virtues: “This means that the national security
approach has enormous difficulties in assessing the appropriate trade-offs that are
needed to guarantee a well-functioning democracy” (p. 5).
Moreover, a national security–focused approach can shift policy making and especially
policy enforcement to government agencies that tend to be under weak democratic
control. The national security agencies of many countries “are typically subject
to limited oversight and accountability, and are historically separated from the citizenry
by secrecy, hierarchy, and virtually unchecked executive power” (Deibert 2018:
413). This issue can be seen in struggles by journalism organizations to report on
security agencies, even in countries with strong protections for a free press (Lidberg
and Muller 2018).
The repressive use of national security laws against disinformation by authoritarian
countries is well-documented (Henley 2018), but concerns have also been raised
about security policies in democracies. One example is Taiwan’s response to potential
Chinese disinformation operations. In the lead-up to the 2020 election, Taiwan
passed the Anti-Infiltration Act that targets foreign interference through
Tenove	 525
disinformation, lobbying, and other means (Aspinwall 2020). The government also
pressured its National Communications Commission to crack down on domestic
news organizations for false and biased reporting that may advance China’s influence.
The former head of the Commission, who allegedly resigned because she did
not agree with this crackdown, warned, “The government says disinformation is the
enemy of an open and democratic society . . . But we don’t want to lose that open
society by fighting against it” (Aspinwall 2020).
Protecting Accountability and Representation: Electoral
Regulation
Governments routinely characterize disinformation as a threat to electoral integrity
and thus to democracy. For instance, the European Commission (2018a) declared
that elections “have proven to be periods which are particularly prone to targeted
disinformation. These attacks affect the integrity and fairness of the electoral process
and citizens’ trust in elected representatives and as such they challenge democracy
itself” (p. 1). This section clarifies the democratic goods at stake in election
interference, identifies recent policies, and highlights some risks and limitations of
these policy responses.
Disinformation as a Threat to Accountable and Representative
Government
Elections are not themselves a normative good; rather, they are core processes for
achieving the democratic good of accountable representation. Elections that do not
advance this are empty procedures, as seen in elections conducted by authoritarian
regimes.
Democratic elections enable citizens to select their political representatives, create
representative bodies that can engage in deliberation and bargaining, and regularly
hold to account their representatives and elected government for past conduct (Manin
1997; Przeworski 1999). For elections to promote these goods, there must be choice
and fair competition among potential representatives, all citizens must have an opportunity
to select a representative, and communicative forums must exist so citizens can
learn about potential representatives and engage in macro-level “conversations” with
them (Young 2000: 121–28).
Online disinformation campaigns can target important elements of elections that
advance democratic representation and accountability. These could include false
claims about where, when, and how to vote, such as those spread by Russia-backed
actors to certain demographic groups in the U.S. 2016 election (DiResta et al. 2018).
Disinformation campaigns can also damage fair competition among candidates and
parties, such as the false stories targeting presidential candidate Macron in the 2017
French election (Jeangène Vilmer et al. 2018: 106–110). In addition, foreign and
domestic actors can violate prohibitions or limits on campaign spending, including
526	 The International Journal of Press/Politics 25(3)
through the use of false accounts to purchase and spread information on social media
platforms (Chaykowski 2017). These and other efforts may undermine self-determination
as well as election integrity, especially if foreign actors damage the empowerments
and processes for members of a polity to contribute to ruling themselves.
Electoral Regulation to Address Disinformation
Disinformation campaigns during elections have revealed inadequacies in electoral
regulation, particularly regarding activities on social media platforms. In a comment
that could be applied to many countries, a U.K. parliamentary committee declared,
“Electoral law in this country is not fit for purpose for the digital age, and needs to be
amended to reflect new technologies” (Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee
2018: 15). Since 2016, many governments have proposed or adopted policies to
respond to those inadequacies.
The most straightforward use of disinformation to undermine electoral integrity is
to spread false information about voting processes, candidates, or election issues.
While some governments already had laws against certain false communications in the
context of election campaigns, these were not designed for the situation where actors
can spread misleading claims widely, quickly, and surreptitiously via social media
platforms.
France has introduced some of the most forceful electoral policies to counter false
information online in elections. Preexisting laws address false and fabricated communication
by targeting their creator or propagator; they were ill-suited to situations
where the originators and disseminators of messages may remain unknown (Smith
2019). The new legislation enables judges to receive complaints about false information
online and, if it violates the law, to order its immediate removal by social media
companies or Internet service providers (National Assembly 2018). In addition, the
French broadcasting agency was given the authority to suspend or terminate the activity
of broadcasters under the influence of foreign states, if they spread false information
likely to undermine electoral integrity. The legislation also requires social media
platforms to disclose payments made to promote messages during elections, and to
create mechanisms for users to alert the companies and government authorities about
false information related to the election.
In addition to spreading false information, disinformation actors have violated the
letter or spirit of electoral finance regulations (e.g., Chaykowski 2017; Karpf 2017).
Such laws apply to how resources are acquired and deployed in elections, often to
amplify electoral messaging. Since 2016, governments have clarified and tightened
laws, particularly with respect to foreign actors. For instance, the Australian government
passed both the Electoral Funding and Disclosure Reform Act and the Foreign
Influence Transparency Scheme Act, largely due to fears of Chinese influence operations
(Douek 2018).
Governments have also adopted policies to improve the transparency of political
advertising, primarily through the creation of publicly accessible ad archives.
Improving transparency is expected to increase the likelihood that citizens, watchdog
Tenove	 527
organizations, and regulators can catch false or illegal advertising, even when they are
micro-targeted toward particular segments of the electorate. Canada and France introduced
laws that require social media companies to create ad repositories; the EU’s
Code of Practice on Disinformation commits signatories (which include all major
social media companies) to create ad repositories and parliamentary committees in the
United Kingdom and the Netherlands have proposed regulations to require ad archives
(Leerssen et al. 2019). A similar proposal in the United States, the Honest Ads Act, has
stalled despite bipartisan support. Facebook and other social media companies have
responded by creating political ad archives, including in the U.S. More recently, in the
face of mounting concerns about the accuracy and targeting of political ads, Twitter
announced it will not allow explicit political advertising, Google will limit the targeting
of political ads and submit certain advertising claims to fact checking, and
Facebook will continue to allow targeting and will shield political ads from its fact
checking (Ingram 2020).
Challenges to Electoral Regulations to Address Disinformation
Even before the rise of social media platforms, electoral regulations in many countries
struggled to address false information in broadcasts, publications, and advertisements,
and failed to enforce electoral spending limits and transparency measures. These challenges
increase when attribution is difficult, as it frequently is for disinformation
efforts on social media platforms. Attribution is necessary for enforcement and thus
for deterrence; it is also necessary for policies that seek to apply different rules to foreign
and domestic entities. For this reason, electoral regulations are often combined
with increased national security efforts that attempt to identify foreign activities, as
has been done by governments including Australia, Canada, Taiwan, and the EU.
It is relatively uncontroversial for governments to prohibit messages that might
straightforwardly lead to disenfranchisement, such as false claims about how to vote.
Governments face greater challenges when trying to regulate the content of claims
about candidates and issues. Such regulations provoke concerns about freedom of
expression, and also about opportunities for captured government agencies to unduly
influence messaging during election campaigns.
While France’s regulation of false claims in elections appears to adhere to rule of
law provisions to protect free expression and avoid capture by the government and
governing party (Smith 2019), other countries’ policies are more problematic. For
instance, in 2018, Italy enacted the “Operating Protocol for the Fight Against the
Diffusion of Fake News through the Web on the Occasion of the Election Campaign
for the 2018 Political Elections,” which gave the Postal Police the authority to determine
if online claims are false or biased and recommend judicial action (Verza 2018).
Giving the police a discretionary role to assess and act on content was strongly criticized
by experts (Verza 2018), including the United Nations special rapporteur for the
protection of freedom of expression (Kaye 2018a), and by journalism organizations
that saw the law as a potential threat to a free press (Funke 2018).
528	 The International Journal of Press/Politics 25(3)
Protecting Deliberation: Media Regulation
Many policy proposals emphasize the threat that disinformation poses to the quality of
public discourse and debate. These values are best captured by analyses of democracies
as deliberative systems. As the LSE Commission on Truth, Trust and Technology
(2018) argues, democracies “must ensure that the infrastructure of deliberation—and
that means the news media and digital information systems—are up to the task of
generating informed dialogue” (p. 12). Rather than targeting disinformation actors
themselves, as do most national security and election policies, media policies seek to
reduce the vulnerabilities of media systems that those actors exploit.
Disinformation as a Threat to Democratic Deliberation
Theories of deliberative democracy propose that communicative exchanges among
citizens are necessary to achieve well-informed and legitimate public decision making
(Habermas 1996; Young 2000). These communicative exchanges promote what theorists
sometimes call “opinion formation” (the development of reasonably informed
individual preferences) and collective “will formation” (coming to understand reasons
for collective judgments). Democratic theorists have increasingly developed systemic
approaches to understand how the normative goods of deliberation can be achieved in
the real world. Systemic approaches do not require that citizens and public officials
frequently meet stringent requirements of deliberation. Instead, the payoffs of deliberation
can be achieved through a division of deliberative labor among different
forums and institutions, producing both particular instances of deliberation and an
overall deliberative quality. A well-functioning system will have sites of discourse that
are linked to decision making (like parliaments and courtrooms), and these should be
informed by and accountable to discourse among citizens in the “wild” public sphere
(Habermas 1996; see also Dryzek 2009; Mansbridge et al. 2012). Deliberation in a
political system, achieved through interactions between interconnected forums, should
promote three normative goods: epistemic quality, moral respect, and democratic
inclusion (Mansbridge et al. 2012). Disinformation campaigns may threaten all three
(Tenove and McKay 2019).
Disinformation campaigns may cause systemic harm to epistemic quality if they
promote false claims at a large scale, or if they discourage citizens from engaging with
high-quality sources of information. For instance, Russia-backed actors promoted
pseudoscience conspiracies about vaccination, climate change, and other issues online,
while also attacking expert institutions that make high-quality information claims
(DiResta et al. 2018).Another tactic is to encourage a sense of helplessness about finding
accurate or authentic claims, an objective of the Russian “firehose of falsehood”
propaganda strategy (Paul and Matthews 2016).
Online disinformation campaigns frequently aim to corrode moral respect toward
social groups, including those that already face obstacles to full political participation
(DiResta et al. 2018; Spaulding et al. 2018). In addition to targeting social groups,
online disinformation includes false claims, conspiracy theories, chauvinistic
Tenove	 529
language, and imagery that stokes moral revulsion toward electoral candidates and
public officials.
Finally, disinformation tactics offer new means to reduce opportunities for people
to be included in discourse on issues that significantly affect them. For instance, foreign
or domestic actors can use bots, fake accounts, promoted posts, and other techniques
to flood communicative forums, and drown out opportunities for individuals to
contribute or encounter diverse views (DiResta et al. 2018; Woolley and Guilbeault
2018). (This is not to deny that digital media can expand some people’s opportunities
to engage in public discussions of political issues, including perspectives that were
marginalized in previous media systems).
In sum, disinformation may undermine a deliberative system not only by increasing
the quantity of false claims in circulation but also by decreasing people’s interest and
opportunity to engage in public discussions on terms of reason giving, respect, and
inclusivity.
Social Media Regulations in Response to Disinformation
All democracies regulate mass media organizations to enhance democratic debate
(Puppis 2014). Since 2016, governments have introduced new media policies in an
effort to address disinformation. These have focused on social media, both because
social media platforms were major vectors for disinformation and because they largely
existed in regulatory gaps.
The global foundation of social media regulation is Section 230 of the U.S. 1996
Communications Decency Act (CDA). This provision enables social media companies
to moderate the content that users share on their platforms without being legally responsible
for that content (with some exceptions). Because social media companies were
based in the United States, this regime was the de facto regulatory approach in most
states prior to 2016. Indeed, the fact that social media regulation until recently has
largely been done by the United States is arguably a violation of self-determination, as
other democratic polities did not make and enforce their own rules over political speech.
Since then, the most prominent regulation of social media companies has been
pursued by Germany, with its 2017 “NetzDG” law. The law requires large social media
platforms to take swift action on content that likely violates one of Germany’s preexisting
statutes on illegal communication, or face a fine of up to fifty million Euros
(Tworek and Leerssen 2019). NetzDG does not explicitly address disinformation but
it does apply to defamation, propaganda advanced by banned organizations, and false
claims that amount to hate speech, such as Holocaust denial. Furthermore, as attacks
on moral respect may also undermine deliberation, NetzDG’s prohibition on hate
speech may protect the deliberative system. While there are concerns that the law
incentivizes platforms to engage in large-scale, preemptive takedowns of legitimate
speech, there is little evidence that this is occurring, although more research is necessary
(Tworek and Leerssen 2019).
The EU has explicitly targeted disinformation using a coregulatory media approach.
The European Commission encouraged key stakeholders to develop a Code of Practice
530	 The International Journal of Press/Politics 25(3)
on Disinformation, which all major social media companies have now signed. The code
includes commitments to reduce fake accounts and bots, improve advertising transparency,
and improve users’ ability to identify untrustworthy and trustworthy sources of
information (Multistakeholder Forum on Disinformation 2018). The approach is coregulatory
rather than self-regulatory because the European Commission has insisted on
and evaluates indicators to determine if social media companies are adhering to the
code, and threatened stronger regulation if its expectations are not met. As an example
of stronger enforcement of a code of conduct, theAustralian Competition and Consumer
Commission (2019) proposed that an independent government body should have the
authority to investigate potential violations of a code of practice and impose fines.
The United Kingdom put forward a somewhat different approach in its Online
Harms White Paper (United Kingdom Parliament 2019). The policy would empower
a regulatory body to enforce expectations regarding individuals’ exposure to harms
through social media use. As commentators and free speech organizations have
observed, this approach may be straightforward for addressing illegal communication
(such as revenge pornography or encouragement of suicide), but vague claims about
disinformation and its harms may result in a framework that violates rights to freedom
of expression (Pomerantsev 2019).
In response to regulatory and public pressure, social media companies have significantly
increased enforcement of their own terms of service, include prohibitions on
spam, fake accounts, and deceptive advertisements. They have also worked with other
groups to address the spread and impact of false claims. For instance, Facebook created
partnerships with independent fact-checking organizations, and it reduces the discoverability
of content that these organizations determine to be significantly false.
There are extensive and valid criticisms of these efforts by Facebook, but they do seem
to be having an effect. Engagements with fake news sites appears to have declined
significantly on Facebook since 2016, although Facebook continues to play a major
role in the diffusion of false or deceptive stories online (Allcott et al. 2019).
Challenges of Media Regulation to Address Disinformation
New social media regulations often seek to make companies enforce governments’
expectations regarding users’ problematic behavior (e.g., deceptive accounts, spam)
and content (e.g., false claims, hate speech). Such measures can have a range of problematic
outcomes. One is that they may be a means for governments to gain undue
control over communication by citizens. This might limit people’s abilities to expound
and test positions, but could also be used to suppress criticism or gain unfair electoral
advantages. A second concern is that regulations may incentivize social media companies
to themselves become the judges and enforcers of speech regulations, without
needing to adhere to rule of law standards such as opportunities for appeal. In both
cases, social media regulation may threaten freedom of expression (ARTICLE 19
2018; Kaye 2018b).
A further risk is that policies could have unintended consequences, perhaps even
increasing opportunities for disinformation. One policy proposal that may do so is the
Tenove	 531
“Ending Support for Internet Censorship Act,” put forward by U.S. Senator Josh
Hawley (Coaston 2019). The law would strip social media companies of their CDA
Section 230 protections unless a government regulator declares them free of political
bias. It would thus empower a government agency to be the key arbiter of political
content. It would also incentivize platforms to refrain from moderating false, deceptive,
or abusive content, out of fear that a government panel might interpret these
actions as evincing bias. The proposed law, which is unlikely to be enacted, is a prime
example of flawed social media regulation, potentially leading to both regulatory capture
and increased incidence of disinformation.
Conclusion
Online disinformation has been a major focus of democratic governments following
revelations of online interference in elections in the United States and elsewhere, generating
numerous and diverse policy responses. This article has attempted to clarify
the different ways in which disinformation might threaten democracy, focusing on the
normative goods of self-determination, accountable representation, and public deliberation.
By making concerns about threats to democracy more explicit, researchers
and policymakers can more clearly specify and evaluate different types of harm. They
can also make clearer recommendations regarding policies to address those harms.
National security responses may be needed to address risks to key state activities such
as the enforcement of election laws and also to ensure that illegitimate actors—especially
foreign states—do not undermine full and fair participation in a democratic
system. Electoral regulations may be needed to protect people’s basic democratic
empowerments, such as the right to vote, and to prevent efforts to compromise fair and
transparent electoral competition. Media regulations should protect free expression in
the wild public sphere while also cultivating media systems capable of supporting
epistemically robust and morally respectful communication.
This article’s analysis also highlights democratic risks posed by disinformation policies
themselves. Here, too, conceptual clarity is necessary. Critics of disinformation
policies often make vague assertions about their threat to freedom of expression. As
Karppinen (2019) has observed, claims that regulations undermine freedom of expression
are “often mobilized by those in power to block reforms and close down debate”
(p. 72), and tend to ignore the many existing obstructions to the use of public speech,
including “new forms of platform dominance and algorithmic censorship” (p. 68). This
article has argued that the dangers of disinformation policies are not simply their restrictions
on what individual people can say but also that they may unduly empower government
agencies, governing political parties, or other entrenched interests to influence
communication at crucial moments (including during election campaigns).
At the same time, a government’s decision not to address disinformation may itself
be an attempt to unduly empower some of these same entities. One striking feature of
policy responses to disinformation since 2016 is the fact that the United States, the
country that experienced the highest-profile campaigns of online election interference,
has not enacted a significant regulatory response. While President Donald Trump has
532	 The International Journal of Press/Politics 25(3)
not backed policies to address disinformation tactics that arguably contributed to his
election, he has publicly supported measures to reduce alleged left-wing bias in social
media content moderation (Vaidhyanathan 2019).
To navigate the challenges of policy responses to disinformation, policymakers can
learn from each other’s innovations and failures. The Italian government’s 2018 “fake
news” law, in which police units were authorized as fact checkers, is a good example
of a defective policy. By contrast, the Canadian government’s creation of a nonpartisan
panel to make decisions about informing the public of disinformation during an
election campaign is promising, as it takes this decision out of the hands of the governing
party and does not leave it solely up to security agencies. The regular and extensive
communication between Swedish intelligence agencies and journalists is another productive
approach, as it leverages the insights of intelligence agencies but leaves public
communication up to independent journalists.
This article’s conceptual framework and policy survey do not lead to clear policy
recommendations. Rather, they help clarify the normative goods at stake and the
potential roles of different policy sectors to protect them. They may therefore sharpen
questions for future research. How effective are different policy responses at addressing
different types of democratic threat? How much do different media systems influence
the means by which disinformation can be countered? When do different policy
measures complement or undermine each other? And when might the poison of disinformation
be less harmful for democracy than proposed policy cures?
Acknowledgments
Thank you to Jordan Buffie, Spencer McKay, Fenwick McKelvey, and Heidi Tworek for feedback
and to Jordan Buffie for research assistance. The article also benefited from comments by
participants in the Digital Threats to Democracy Threats to Democracy workshop, hosted by the
Social Science Research Council in June, 2019.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship,
and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship,
and/or publication of this article: Support for this research was provided by the Social Sciences
and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
ORCID iD
Chris Tenove https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4244-0878
Notes
1.	 As Nielsen and Graves (2017) rightly argue, surveys regarding people’s concerns about
fake news or disinformation should be further interrogated, as respondents may not be
using researchers’ definitions of these terms but may be articulating broader frustrations
with news media, social media, or the quality of political discourse.
Tenove	 533
2.	 In addition to disinformation, policy-making responses have also identified democratic
threats posed by issues including cybersecurity and the exploitation of people’s private
data. These issues are beyond the scope of this article, as they challenge democracy in
somewhat different ways and require different policy responses.
3.	 Policy analysis in this article is illustrative rather than exhaustive. I highlight particular
government policies to illustrate challenges in each policy sector. A full documentation of
all policies of all government policies in all three sectors, or in-depth analysis of policy
making by any particular government, is beyond the scope of this article.
4.	 For a complementary analysis of foreign disinformation as an attack on self-determination,
see Ohlin (2017).
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Author Biography
Chris Tenove is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Political Science at the University
of British Columbia.